Four Focus Areas in Depth

Focus Area 4: Build confidence and self-worth, cont.

Encouragement is Contagious

1. People learn faster from success than from failure.
2. People respond best to praise and positive reinforcement.
3. When encouragement is modeled from the top, it is more likely to become part of the culture.
4. A person’s ability is influenced by the quality of his or her leadership. Leaders who show confidence and belief in ability, no matter how difficult the task, enable their people to realize and sustain efforts.
5. When a person or group has individual control to direct an effort, performance is consistently higher.
6. Through encouragement and belief, leaders are able to expand peoples' capacity beyond the limits they have placed on themselves.

Developing Postive Self-Regard for Others

Positive self-regard is the belief in one’s self. It’s the self-esteem that gives you the confidence and trust in your ability to succeed and deliver high outcomes. Positive self-regard is also used to develop and enhance working with others. These five ideas are key to developing regard in others:

1. The ability to accept people as they are; to understand people on their terms, rather than judging them on yours.
2. The capacity to approach relationships and problems in terms of the present rather than the past.
3. The ability to treat those who are close to you with the same courteous attention that you extend to others. As in family settings, one can get too close to those whom we work with and take them for granted.
4. The ability to trust others, even if the risk seems great. The price for not trusting is too high. What is it costing you?
5. The ability to do without constant approval and recognition from others. The need for constant approval is counterproductive, especially when this shuts down the ability to produce.